Nature’s First Green is Gold

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

This poem by Robert Frost was running through my head as I was hiking and camping the Appalachian trail this weekend. Now that I am back in the city and all the greens have been replaced by grays (sky, sidewalks, buildings), the wealth of green seems all the more precious and fleeting. In my mind, they seems as glittering and varied as they do in Klimt’s The Park, a riot of densely undulating color.

Natural Connections

Bush, Cole Bay, Anguilla

Maelstorm, 2009, Roxy Paine

Assemblage in shape of teepee, Anguila

Metropolitan 139, 1961, Jean Tinguely

Rainbow over the valley, St. Maarten

Hell Yes, 2001, Ugo Rondinone

Also, I did not get a picture of this, but coming back on the ferry from Anguilla I saw a sky just this color blue over the distant hills of Saint Maarten, and a single star had the same electrifying effect that this moon does.

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

k